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These are the last words of some of the most famous novels ever written.

Courtesy of the BBC Website

1. “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
2. “Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.”

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

3. “But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

The House At Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne

4. “He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

5. “Are there any questions?”

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

6. “And then, while the pretty brunette girl finished singing her verse, he buzzed me through like I was someone who mattered.”

The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger

7. “I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

8. “The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling

9. “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

10. “Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.”

Whilst reading a book or watching a film, even a TV drama, I do enjoy picking up on clues. Those little moments when the writer throws in a stepping stone for us to move a little bit closer to solving the old question. Whodunnit?

I like to marvel at just how many of these clues are not really that, but so-called Red Herrings.

Where does the term Red Herring come from?

According to an entry in Wikipedia

The origin of the expression is unknown. Conventional wisdom has long supposed it to be the use of a kipper (a strong-smelling smoked fish) to train hounds to follow a scent, or to divert them from the correct route when hunting; however, modern linguistic research suggests that the term was probably invented in 1807 by English polemicist William Cobbett, referring to one occasion on which he had supposedly used a kipper to divert hounds from chasing a hare, and was never an actual practice of hunters. The phrase was later borrowed to provide a formal name for the logical fallacy and literary device.>

I’ve always been interested in the origin of expressions we use every day without thinking. Those which have a meaning completely unrelated to its words. There are so many of these we mostly don’t even think about them:

Bite the bullet – Used as a type of anaesthetic, patients would be given a bullet to bite

Break the ice – When ships were stuck the nearest nation would send their vessels to release it

Mad as a hatter – Nothing to do with Lewis Carrol’s books but from a disease of hat makers, caused by Mercury used in the process, which brought about strange behaviour

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – In the early 1500s, people only bathed once a year. Not only that, but they also bathed in the same water without changing it! The adult males would bath first, then the females, leaving the children and babies to go last. By the time the babies got in, the water was clouded with filth. The poor mothers had to take extra care that their babies were not thrown out with the bathwater.

Give the cold shoulder – In medieval England, it was customary to give a guest a cold piece of meat from the shoulder of mutton, pork, or beef chop when the host felt it was time for the guest to leave. This was a polite way to communicate, “You may leave, now.”

These are just a few of the many sayings we have in the English language.

Let’s Get Digital 3 was announced this week and it is going very well indeed, with 1,000 copies pre-ordered already. The amount of sharing and recommending and tweeting has been spectacular – I’m very grateful to you all.

The author of Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible is back to reveal the inner machinations of the biggest bookstore in the world. By reading Amazon Decoded: A Marketing Guide To The Kindle Store, you will:

These are just some of the things that the modern, fast, pace of life robs us of. So how do we find the time to finish, or even start, that novel that everyone has inside them? All the best selling writers have differing ideas. David Hewson (Author of over 20 books) has a clear and defined writing schedule and he stuck rigidly to it. He never writes at the weekend. Stephen King, one of the most prolific of modern writers, has set times for reading and for writing. Both of these writers and many others too began writing novels whilst working full time and juggling their time between, work, family and writing. Even Anthony Trollope, who wrote over 40 novels in Victorian Britain, and held down a demanding job in the Post Office.

So where do these great novelists find the time? They use their available, stolen, time productively. Trollope wrote for three hours every morning before heading off to work. It’s rumoured that he paid a servant to wake him at five each day so that he could write.

Allocating time to write is important but once you have the time; what then? We’ve all stared at a notepad or computer screen hoping that inspiration will come. Been distracted by an email or news item which we must read. When that happens and the inspiration doesn’t come we feel a little cheated knowing that time is lost forever.

In the late 1980’s Francesco Cirillo used a kitchen timer, shaped like a tomato, to focus his mind on the work in hand. The word Pomodoro comes from the Italian word for tomato.

There are six steps in the original technique:

Decide on the task to be done.

Set the Pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).

Work on the task.

End work when the timer rings and put a checkmark on a piece of paper.

If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 2.

After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.

The idea is to make the focus on the time available. When the alarm rings (After 25 mins) take a break. Reset the timer to cover a break and when it rings again, your break is over. Reset the timer and off to work again. No other distractions should interfere with your productivity.

We’re well into January now and all those good intentions should be firmly taking route. Dry January, Gym visits, Smoking patches, and the dreaded Diet , etc means we should all be feeling pretty good about ourselves and our new regimes.

Sadly, for most of us, that will not be the case. My promise to myself (I find it easier not to proclaim my resolutions to anyone but myself.) has already fallen at the first hurdle. My 2018 To-do-list is topped by:

Write a blog post every week.

Second is: Edit a scene from the first draft of my novel every day.

Both of these, sadly, have failed to happen as life, like so often happens, has gotten in the way. So I’ve managed neither of those but I intend to change that and pretend that today is New Years Day and in my new world calendar I’m starting as I mean to go on.

So everything is reset, my new list is on track, I feel inspired and renewed and all is well with the world. Perhaps.

It’s that time of year again. The time when I decide whether or not to take up the November writing challenge. I did it last year, won and have spent ever since trying to make my effort into something readable. I’m still working on it and its grown to over 90,000 words as I try to get it to a suitable ending.

In the past, I’ve always struggled to start or got bogged down in the middle somewhere. Lost focus or lost interest or just found that time had overtaken me and then it was difficult to get started again. I’ve been lucky to be able to use Scrivener to break it up into manageable chunks and lately I’ve started using Ulysses, which does the same but in a different way. In fact, I’m writing this in Ulysses as it allows me to post straight into WordPress and onto my blog. Easy.

I need to make up my mind shortly though as that will give me time to research and plan during October. Although I’m pretty sure that things will be busy for me in that month so as you can see. I’m a long way from deciding as we head towards the end of September. Have to wait and see I suppose.

If I abandon my 90,000+ word project for a couple of months whilst I indulge myself on NaNoWriMo will I ever start it again? On the other hand, if I do that and then come back to it will reading it again guide me to a suitable ending? Dilemma – I’ll let you know.

I have written before about the use of writing app’s as an aid to productivity so I won’t repeat myself here. I will however tell you about my experience with Ulysses, as writing tool from The Soul Men. It’s not exactly new but it’s new to me and, so far, I love its simplicity.

Since acquiring an iPad Air I have been looking for a writing app which is easy to use and fully functional on this device. I have waited for Scrivener to deliver their much promised iOS version which is now on the market and working fine. Anyone who uses Scrivener will know what a great tool this is particularly as it is now a true cross platform piece on Mac, iOS and Windows via the Dropbox cloud storage facility. But whilst I was waiting for the iOS Scrivener App to be developed I discovered this wonderful writing app called Ulysses and fell for it immediately.

It’s quite unlike anything I’ve used before. It is so simple and clean that it inspires the writing process. I am currently writing this post on my iPad and it is set in ‘Typewriter’ mode which means the line I type is always in the same place and so I look at a single line of text as I’m typing it on the page. This stops the distraction of looking back at what I’ve typed previously and so I’m not flitting back and forth, editing as I work. (This has always hampered my progress, as I constantly ‘fiddle’ with work I’ve written but I don’t wait until the draft is done)

There is full Mac version too and also an iPhone app and they all work in iCloud so there is an almost instant update on all these devices without the need to do anything but type. It removes the need for the writer to constantly save work as it is saved automatically in iCloud, if you have an Internet connection or updates immediately you go back online. I can’t remember how many pieces of work I’ve lost because I failed to save them properly. There is so much more to this great bit of software which I don’t,t intend to describe here but I would encourage you to have a look at it.

Look in the App Store for it, you won’t be disappointed. Sadly, there is no Windows version. Or check out the website http://ulyssesapp.com